Okay so for the last couple of hangouts, I’ve tried something that seems to have changed the game.
I’m changing the narrative.
The narrative that was previously playing in my head was that I would date and marry a woman who was super sharp and a little bit coy and clever and nuanced as well as completely loving and socially apt and beautiful and all that.
I basically thought it would be someone who was the same as I wanted ME to be.
But B is different. And her differences are a good complement to me. I believe that. I just couldn’t convince myself of that in the moment.
I prayed for help to love her when I was on the road the other day (I’ve been forced to pray a lot, and I’m seeing God answer prayers). I was pretty desperate. And maybe thirty minutes after my prayer a new narrative popped into my head.
It was almost like I knew two new characters and knew their dynamic like it were a TV show I had seen before. I immediately knew them in my head. Maybe this narrative, and these characters, and this dynamic between the two of them, it is out there in media somewhere.
But what I pictured was a different and new narrative about the dynamic between two people. And this is important I think: it was a narrative I was enamored by. Here it is.
I pictured a man who was serious and pensive and pretty intellectual. And then I saw the smile in the way he looked at his woman, who was a little bit ditzy, but phenomenal in the way she loved and was full of joy, and infinitely forgiving and patient and kind. He looked at her in admiration, smiling because her ditzyness was cute to him, and he knew the deep value she brought in every other area.
There was one other thing I added into this prescription (it is a prescription for myself because I told myself I would picture this narrative every time B said something that could sound ditzy). This other thing was to FORGIVE. If something seemed really dumb in what she said, and even if it was beyond ditzy, I would tell myself immediately, even shaping the word out with my tongue behind my smiling lips, “FORGIVE.” And when something bothered me, I said it to myself again. And I tried to feel it. And it seemed to disarm the power of the bothersome things and put me on a track of safety and happiness.
And so far, it has made for a few of the most beautiful and pure love I’ve felt for this woman yet. Well, this is how it feels when it’s good. I feel in love with her again. Even after 2.5 years of this.
Good luck,
R 3-16-21 (less than 2 months before our wedding).
Relationship-OCD 